Andres Saenz was named the MIAC Men's Tennis Athlete-of-the-Week for his performance at the ITA National Indoor Championship this past weekend.
Bloomington, Minn. – Against a field that featured eight of the top 15 teams in NCAA Division III men’s tennis, the Gustavus suffered three hard-fought, grind-out losses to No. 3 Trinity University 6-3, No. 8 Case Western Reserve University 5-4, and No. 9 Carnegie Mellon University 5-4 at the 2015 ITA National Indoor Championship held over the weekend at the Swanson Tennis Center. Leading the Gusties with a pair of wins in singles play and two more wins in doubles against national caliber opponents was sophomore Andres Saenz (Cancun, Mexico). For his efforts, Saenz was named the MIAC Men’s Tennis Athlete-of-the-Week.
Locking down Gustavus’s No. 4 position in singles throughout the weekend, Andres Saenz began the tournament with a straight set 6-3, 7-5 win over Trinity’s Clayton Neiss on Friday night. On Saturday, Saenz suffered a three set loss 4-6, 6-3, 3-6 to Case Western Reserve’s Louis Sturke to begin the day. To cap the weekend in a match played well into the wee hours of the night, the Cancun product picked up his own three set win by beating Carnegie Mellon’s Kenny Zheng 4-6, 7-5, 6-0.
At the top of Tommy Valentini’s doubles lineup with partner Motasem Al-Houni (Tripoli, Libya), Saenz bounced back from an opening loss with two straight wins. After suffering an 8-5 loss to the nation’s top-ranked tandem in Trinity’s Jrodan Mayer and Aaron Skinner, the Gustie duo picked up an 8-4 win over Spartans Chris Krimbill and Louis Stuerke, and later an 8-3 victory over Tartens Will Duncan and C. Heaney-Secord.
Andres Saenz will head into MIAC play this weekend with a singles record of 9-4 and a doubles record of 12-4. The 3-5 Gusties will host Bethel at 10:30 a.m. and Grinnell at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28 at the Swanson Tennis Center.